Clarity
by Mendys
Summary: This is another take on the aftermath of "Eye of the Gorgon." Sarah Jane and Alan have a conversation. Mentions Maria and has a cameo from Luke and Clyde.


This is another take on the aftermath of "Eye of the Gorgon."

* * *

Sarah Jane had just barely finished settling Luke and Clyde down (they had been making some noises about getting through some of their schoolwork) when there was a knock on the door. Quickly crossing her foyer to open it, she was surprised to find Alan Jackson standing in the doorway, leaning on the frame with a sheepish look on his face.

She smiled back, surprised to see him again so soon. The Jacksons had only cleared out a bit ago and Sarah Jane hadn't even had a chance yet to truly work through what had happened earlier and the implications of how Alan Jackson could have ended had it not been for Bea's timely and heroic assistance and a lot of luck and good timing.

She wouldn't be able to get Maria's tears out of her mind for a while yet, she expected. It still hurt to realize she'd been the cause of those tears.

She supposed she had been staring at Alan for a bit too long, for he cleared his throat and started off with, "I owe you an apology."

Now there was a surprise, an unwelcome one at that. If the man only knew what she had nearly brought down on him, she very much doubted he would be over here to offer an apology for some imagined transgression. "What on earth for?" She opened the door fully. "Please, come in, Alan."

"The day we moved in and introduced ourselves," the day she had blown off that darling Maria and nearly run him down with her car, if she was now recalling correctly, "I gave you my assurances that everything had been sorted out from the divorce. No shouting and all that. Chrissie just turned up out of the blue. I'm sorry if we've caused you any trouble, or disturbances."

Recalling the first words she had ever said to him, she supposed she couldn't blame him for wanting to make sure she wasn't angry. She was only surprised to look back at herself and be appalled at the sheer inconsequence of what she had been worrying about at that time. Yes, she had been distracted, but that was no excuse. She had been so rudely concerned about NOISE, for pete's sake.

As for today, she _had_ been concerned about Maria's emotional state after she found out why Maria was so upset earlier, but she had been so caught up in the Gorgon mess that whatever Jackson family drama had been going on had largely gone over her head until Chrissie Jackson had come bursting into her lounge, Alan and Maria in tow, because she had been peeking in through her window at exactly the wrong time.

And now the man was being decent enough to come over and apologize for a situation that was completely out of his control, one that couldn't have been predicted, much less prevented.

"That's perfectly all right, Mr. Jackson." she assured him, gesturing to him to follow her into the kitchen. She had just put the kettle on and he deserved some of her time, considering the fact that he'd nearly been killed because of her today. "I was sorry Maria was so upset, but none of you were disturbing me. Would you like some tea?"

"I suppose I could do with some." He looked around the kitchen, his hands in his pockets. Sarah Jane was surprised at how endearing his awkwardness was. Maybe he was just as out of practice making new friends as she was. "I just wanted to make sure. A lot gets by me, that much is probably obvious by now, but I'm getting a bit better at being a little less... oblivious, I suppose. I don't want our problems to affect perfectly nice people who haven't got a thing to do with them."

"That's very sensitive of you. Again, an apology is not necessary, but I appreciate it all the same. Please, sit down."

"Thanks." Alan (Sarah Jane was surprised at how easily he had become "Alan" in her thoughts) sat down, running his hands over his face and through his hair, something evidently still weighing on his mind. "Maria was upset, you said?"

The unhappiness written all over his face had Sarah Jane regretting her earlier words. The man was clearly trying his best to make the most of things for Maria and not only was she placing Maria in the position of keeping secrets from him, but here she was speaking out of turn.

Alan was watching her. Sensing her hesitation, he sighed. "We had a row earlier. I certainly am not asking you to break any confidences, but if there's something I should know, to help fix this..." he trailed off, shrugging helplessly.

Oh, there were so many things Alan had a right to know, as Maria's father. Things she would do everything in her power to stop him knowing, for his own peace of mind. But he was talking about something else entirely.

"Maria was saying something about having shouted at you earlier." While she was reasonably certain that the extreme circumstances had done a great deal to blow whatever had passed between Maria and Alan out of proportion, she hoped that whatever it was had already been settled. She knew just by looking at Maria and spending time with her how close she and Alan were and she already suspected that whatever argument she'd had with her mother and spilled over to her father involved her. "She didn't go into many details, but I got the idea she felt guilty for whatever was said."

"Well, she's over there clearing up the kitchen and starting dinner. Spaghetti." He smiled sadly at the confusion on her face. "My favorite. I'd say you're right that she's still feeling guilty. She's nothing to be guilty about. I was the one who failed her, not the other way around." He sighed, accepting the cup of tea she brought to the table. "I'm sorry, I'm sure you've got enough on your plate without listening to me."

"It's not my intention to pry, but if there's any way I can help, even if it's just listening..." Sarah Jane sat down across from him with her own cup of tea. It was true, she did have a number of things on her plate. But with the immediate crisis past, she couldn't help but revel in something as normal as sitting down and talking to someone. It had been a very long time since she had been close enough to anyone to engage in anything more than small talk and general acquaintance. Not that she was at all happy to see the man in front of her clearly in some distress, but she already owed him for bringing Maria into her life, and for providing Luke with a positive older male figure in his life. Clyde, bless him, was wonderful to and with Luke, but Sarah Jane had found herself wondering if it was fair to Clyde to put him on a level he really oughtn't be placed on.

Alan stared into his tea before taking a sip, sighing. "How do you tell your daughter that you had more to do with the divorce than she really knows?"

"How do you mean?" Maria didn't talk much about the hows and whys of her parents' split, but Alan himself had indicated that Maria's mother had done the walking-out, not the other way around. Sarah Jane had been, indeed, curious about the chain of events that had led to Alan, a single father, having primary custody of Maria rather than her mother, but she also knew from the start that none of it was any of her business and it was mere curiosity. The courts were no longer so very skewed to favor a clear wronged party, even in the events that there were any clear wronged parties, and they were starting to allow more mothers (even if they were the reason for divorce) to keep their children primarily with them.

Then again, she had always been nosy anyway.

"Chrissie did walk out on me, after running out on me for God only knows how long. I didn't ask. I didn't want to know." Alan's eyes were on the table, but she could tell by the look in them that he wasn't really seeing what was in front of him. "You may not know it to look at me, but my temper can be dodgy. It gets the best of me at times. And that last big row with Chrissie..." He sighed, shaking his head. "She let Ivan slip and I lost it. I can't even remember half of the things I said to her. Most of them were probably foul and at least partway unfair. She wasn't expecting it."

She couldn't understand how Chrissie Jackson, for all her obtuseness and self-centeredness, could possibly NOT expect a good deal of anger from her husband upon an announcement that she was walking out on him for another man. Surely no one could possibly be that oblivious.

"Chrissie said that if she'd any idea I still cared as much as I was proving right then, she never would have looked elsewhere."

"Ah." Some of the pieces were starting to fall into place. "You'd grown apart."

"We married young. Extremely young. Most would assume it was a shotgun wedding. Maria didn't come along until a year and a half later." Alan looked up at Sarah Jane. "We're different, Chrissie and I. I've always been pretty serious and Chrissie loves fun and excitement and laughs and a good time. I was drawn to her because of that. I was smart in school, always buried in my schoolwork. I was damned stuffy, Sarah Jane, and Chrissie drew me out. Still can't understand what she saw in me, sometimes."

Sarah Jane didn't even have to call upon her many years of honing her journalistic skills to hazard a guess at that. "You're a good man, Alan. You're solid and dependable and, if I may say so, you're also gorgeous." She could see the appeal of a man who seemed to be a calm center, a still point.

"I'm not dependable." Alan curtly replied and she couldn't help wondering at his defensiveness, at the bitter, ironic smile that appeared on his face for just a moment.

"Oh, you're being hard on yourself."

"Maybe in a superficial sense, I am dependable." Alan corrected himself, nodding slightly to concede the point. "I've got a stable job, I've worked from home since Maria was little, I pay the bills on time, I take care of..." He sighed again. "But I've come to realize over the past months since Chrissie dropped Ivan on me, I wasn't there for Chrissie. I took her for granted, assumed she would always be there."

Here she had to tread carefully. Yes, Alan was opening up to her and yes, both of them had given each other outs to end the conversation earlier, but she was still about to offer commentary on something she really knew very little about. She didn't even have all that much personal experience in recent memory to draw upon for parallels. "She was your wife, Alan. She should have always been there."

"She actually asked me to take those judo classes with her." Alan admitted, running his hand through his hair. "She wanted to do something fun, something for the two of us. I was too busy with work, too busy with Maria. Thinking of it now, she must have felt very shut out for a very long time. I mean, she and Maria were always thick as thieves as well, just like Maria and I. But she admitted as much, it'd been a very long time since she felt like we were a married couple with a daughter rather than just co-parents. That was my failure. I loved her, she was the first girl I loved, the only girl I've ever loved. But I forgot to let her know it."

Sarah Jane knew what it was to suddenly see things about oneself in a different light and her heart went out to Alan, because it was clear that he was still struggling with his new impression that he was to blame for the breakdown of his marriage.

"And all Maria knows is that Chrissie walked out on us for another man. That's partly why I do my best to be flexible when it comes to Chrissie's drop-ins. For all her faults and for all that she makes me so furious I can barely see straight sometimes, she's never tried to come between me and Maria, even though she had every right to." Alan shook his head, downing the rest of his tea. "It's really down to me, Sarah Jane, and my failure. That's why I've never let Maria see how much it bothers me, that my marriage broke down, that our family broke up. Because it's not as much Chrissie's fault as it seems at first glance. But now Maria thinks it doesn't bother me." He suddenly looked up at her, his eyes intense. "It DOES bother me, her running to us to teach that boyfriend of hers a lesson. How can I make Maria see that without ruining our relationship?"

All she had seen in her life, all she had done in her life, and there was still such exquisite complexity right here in her own kitchen. She had to admit, she was extremely bowled over. She had assumed that Alan Jackson was a man who took anything in stride. The small glances into the dynamic between him and his ex-wife she had gotten were put into a slightly new light by his confession, but she couldn't help but feel that this was something Chrissie counted on, Alan blaming himself for not being enough for her. While she did feel a new sympathy for Chrissie (after all, she had spent years pining after the Doctor, a man who was simply not built to fully return the feelings she had for him), whatever had passed between her and Alan didn't excuse the way she treated him now.

"Alan, this is a difficult situation," Sarah Jane knew she needed to continue treading lightly, but she couldn't NOT offer advice, not while Alan Jackson was clearly asking for another perspective from her, "and I'm hardly in a position to offer advice. But Maria is an extremely smart, sensitive girl and while it may be a bit of a blow to realize that her father isn't perfect, I don't think it will have all that much of an impact on your relationship. You've said yourself that whatever may or may not have passed between you and Maria's mother, you've both always had good relationships with Maria." And the fact that Chrissie hadn't been exactly bad-mouthing Alan to Maria despite the opportunities to do so (though Sarah Jane couldn't help wondering how seeing how Chrissie treated Alan was affecting Maria), was very telling in that both of Maria's parents wanted her to have the best relationship possible with the other parent. "Alan, both you and Chrissie, it seems, have every right to run each other down to her, but you don't. Neither of you do that to her."

"I've still been unfair to Chrissie, and by extension, unfair to Maria."

"Maria is fourteen years old." Sarah Jane pointed out firmly. "She's one of the smartest, most sensitive children I've ever met, but I honestly don't think she can possibly fully grasp everything you've told me about you and her mother. I think you've been feeling that you've been protecting yourself by hiding behind protecting her from things that are beyond her at this point. And, to be frank, some of these things aren't her business." She leaned back, sighing. It was clear from the uneasiness still written all over him that she wasn't providing any help whatsoever. "And I don't think you're being unfair to Maria's mother. If anything, I think she may count on your sense of responsibility to allow her to waltz in whenever she likes."

She almost expected Alan to end the conversation right there, because this was a bit of a delicate matter, and a private problem. No matter how friendly they were becoming, she really had no right to offer commentary on his ex-wife. Ask him to keep Chrissie away from her lounge and front windows, maybe, but not comment on the state of his current relationship with her.

Instead, he surprised her by nodding in agreement. "I know she counts on it. And I know I let her get away with a lot. If you only knew how furious she makes me..." He broke off that train of thought with a chuckle, giving his head a shake. Refocusing his mind, and his mood. In a matter of moments, he was leaning back and his usual smile had returned to his face. "I'm sorry. I really didn't come over here for a therapy session. And I'm reasonably certain you didn't invite me in for a cup of tea to provide one."

"That's absolutely no problem, Alan. You've been rather patient in answering my dafter questions about parenthood." And he had offered her some good advice, as well as shared some stories that made her look forward even more to every first she would get to experience with Luke.

"I keep telling you, it gets easier with time." Alan pointed out, and she made a face at him, drawing another genuine smile to his face. "Speaking of, how's Luke getting along at school? The way Maria tells it, he's a hit with most of his teachers."

"He's getting on very well with his schoolwork." Sarah Jane replied, pleased that he continued to show such an interest in her son. She had noted several occasional mentions of Clyde's mother, Carla, and she assumed that he was taking just as keen an interest in Clyde. She thought it was a pity he hadn't had more kids of his own, because it was glaringly obvious that he was a wonderful father and loved kids.

"Not to toot my own horn or anything, but I was smart in school myself, as I alluded to earlier." Alan remarked, and she wondered what had brought that on. It was fairly obvious, given the nature of his work and the fact that he kept nearly whatever hours he wanted to keep when it came to work. But she already knew that rarely did a word cross Alan Jackson's lips without a good reason. It was part of what made her comfortable around him, that he didn't necessarily need to be talking at a mile a minute, nor did he expect her to. So she smiled at him over her mug, waiting until he decided to speak again.

"The thing is, and I hope I'm not overstepping my boundaries, but I remember some of the bumps in the road I encountered while I was in school, especially when I was Luke's age. If there's ever anything I can do for him, especially since he's been such a good friend for Maria already, I hope you know I'd be happy to help, in any way I can."

Sarah Jane was honestly torn. She knew that Alan had all best of intentions and if her cover story was true, if Luke really was just a normal sheltered young boy she had adopted, she would more than likely accept whatever assistance Alan wanted to offer with very little hesitation. One only had to look at Maria to know how perfectly loved she had been her entire life. Maria carried it in a way that made her shine in ways Sarah Jane had seen very few others (human or otherwise) shine. Sarah Jane was sure that Chrissie loved Maria, very much, but she also couldn't help but feel that Maria's complete security could only have come from being loved the way Alan loved her. And she had just been thinking about what a shame it was Alan hadn't had more children.

There was only one thing wrong with that picture. Luke wasn't simply a normal albeit sheltered young boy she had adopted and there were so many ways in which the secret could be spilled. Finding out about Luke in and of itself wouldn't be a catastrophe, but Sarah Jane had already spent some time considering what might happen if Alan found out what Maria was up to in her spare time (and even some school hours). A father with his priorities as in order as Alan Jackson had would never allow Maria to continue on this new adventure she had stumbled into. An unexpected pang stabbed at her heart at the thought of losing Maria, who was very quickly becoming so very precious to her.

If Maria was this precious to her after only a few weeks, how precious must she be to Alan, who had known her and loved her her whole life?

"That's a very kind offer, Alan, but I seem to remember you coming over here, concerned because you thought Maria was wearing out her welcome?"

"And I seem to remember being told that Maria was a joy to have around, and how good she is for Luke."

"Touche." She saluted him with her mug. "I meant it, though. She is a wonderful young girl, Alan. You should be very proud of her. And if I may be so bold, it's perfectly obvious how well she's been cared for."

"Maria's everything to me," Alan said, a small smile curving his lips. "I suppose you feel the same way about Luke."

"Mum?"

Both of them looked toward the doorway to see Luke standing there uncertainly, Clyde right behind him.

"Can Clyde stay for dinner? His mum's working late tonight."

"I suppose that's my cue to get out of your hair," Alan stood up, smiling at the boys, before offering his hand to her. "Thanks for the tea."

"Wait a second." Sarah Jane turned back to the boys. "Clyde may stay for dinner. Will you need a ride home after?"

Clyde paused, considering, before he replied. "Mum could probably pick me up on her way from work."

"Well, if she can't, I'm perfectly willing to drive you home. Now both of you, go wash up for dinner then."

"Thanks, Mum." Luke said, both boys leaving the kitchen.

By this time, Alan had reached the doorway himself, but he also paused for a moment, a mischievous look coming over his face.

"What?" she asked, feeling her cheeks heat up slightly.

"You think I'm gorgeous?"

"What on- Oh." Now she was a little embarrassed. "Well, Alan, have you looked in a mirror lately?"

"I happen to think you're pretty easy on the eyes as well." Touching his finger to his forehead in a salute, he headed out, calling, "Thanks again!"


End file.
